Eckley Miners’ Village opened in 1854 as anthracite coal mining became the predominant regional industry, with homes and a company store established first. A colliery, additional houses, churches, hotel, school, and outbuildings erected in the late 19th century reflected the growth of mining and the community. A series of owners of both the village and its underlying minerals controlled the community during its 115-year life as a private concern, and their lack of investment left the village’s original appearance readily evident. The village offers an authentic reflection of life in an anthracite mining town from the 19th to the mid-20th centuries. Because it so well reflected 19th-century mining life, story, and time, Paramount Studios selected Eckley as a movie set for The Molly Maguires in 1967-68. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania acquired the village and opened it as a museum in 1971. Individual buildings and much of the village have been well preserved, although Eckley changed over time: an 1873 map shows a second active street lined with homes and a breaker several hundred feet from the current location, but that street and original breaker are no longer evident today. More than 200 people lived there when the Commonwealth opened it as a historic site in 1971, while fewer than 20 residents remain today. Those residents and former residents continue to provide insight and information for historic preservation, interpretation, and public education about Eckley’s past and the statewide and national significance of the anthracite region. Anthracite coal, found in quantity only in northeastern Pennsylvania, was the heating and iron-making fuel of choice for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and Eckley and other partners in northeastern Pennsylvania preserve the story of the anthracite region and its people.